The Torrington area once played a small part in British telephone history. In the 1930s, the GPO developed a switching system it called the Country Satellite Exchange (CSX). It was a halfway house between a rural party line and a dedicated automatic exchange. The first trial exchange was named Langtree and it opened on 1 June 1933. Nine subscribers – the maximum was ten – were wired up to a central control box mounted on a pole opposite the Green Dragon Inn in Langtree (seen behind the pole in the left photograph). A single pair of wires connected the box to the manual exchange in Torrington. Subscribers lifting their receivers were answered by the Torrington operator. While a call was in progress, all other subscribers’ lines were disconnected, offering privacy, although it was also possible for the operator to connect two subscribers on the same CSX. On incoming calls, impulses from the parent exchange operated relays to select individual lines. As far as subscribers were concerned the box on a pole was a telephone exchange. They were given Langtree numbers – 201 to 209 –  and when the CSX was replaced by a “real” telephone exchange, no change of numbers was needed.

Picture: courtesy of Sam Hallas’s repository of Post Office Electrical Engineers Journals. More information can be found HERE